Kracken
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off o this.
Warnings:Male/male sex, graphic, language, violence, abuse, torture, heavy,
dark angst, attempted NCS, not a deathfic.
Burning Candles
Honor
"I think this is good for my back. I feel the kinks loosening already," Duo quipped hoarsely. His two guards remained silent staring at him steadily.
Duo tried, for the hundredth time, to find a more comfortable position than the one that his captors had allowed him. His arms were locked behind him to the wall, a curved support under his back making him bend backwards. His head tilted back as well and his metal neck collar was attached to the same chain that was forcing his arms backwards. Two chains were locked around his knees, attached to a crossbar over his head. Those chains ran through two metal loops there and then ran back down to a ring and the chain attached to his neck and arms. He could hold his legs down against the drag of the chain, but that made the chain tighten and pull his collar tight into his throat. Duo could over come the pain, but it took strength to keep that position and, again and again, his strength ran out and he was forced to let his legs dangle from the chains, knees apart and his naked body vulnerable to the steady stare of his guards.
It was humiliating. Duo couldn't lie to himself about that. Revenant even changed the guards periodically to keep that humiliation fresh. Being vulnerable, hair unbraided, and held in place as if he were some whore offering himself to two strangers, Duo couldn't help the crawling sickness in his gut. He knew the routine, though. Most of a man's defenses against coercion were in his psyche. Honor, stubbornness, and a sense of personal power could make a man proof against a lot of things. Soften the target, put him off balance, and make him emotionally vulnerable, and torture was a lot more effective at breaking a man.
Duo let his legs dangle again, feeling a cold draft travel over the insides of his legs. He shivered. There was still burning pain between his legs from the second shock His muscles were still throbbing from the spasms, and his head was still pounding. He forced himself to stay alert, though, instead of seeking the comfort of sleep. He had to watch his guards. He had to find a particular man.
After the third set of guards, Duo finally spotted the right man. He kept his eyes almost closed, his breathing even, but he saw, through his lashes, when one of the new guards let his glance slide between Duo's legs. It was only for a moment, the man didn't want his fellow guard catching him at it, but it was enough for Duo.
Duo let his legs hang and even let them dangle open further than he had too. Again, he saw the guard's eyes flick to him and the man clearly swallowed. The other guard looked disgusted and bored, forced to watch Duo because of orders, but not really focusing on any point of his body.
Duo faked dreaming, muttering under his breath and moving. He arched his back and made an undulating motion with his hips. Once, twice, and then he was still again. The sickness in his gut grew and the humiliation burned through him worse than the pain between his legs.
"I forgot, " the one guard told the other, "Bernstein wanted you to inventory that shipment of weapons before down time tonight."
"Dammit!" The other guard grumbled. "That'll take an hour at least!" He glared at Duo. "That means overtime. Stupid shit! I should jam my gun into his ass and empty the clip."
Duo kept himself from wincing. He moved in his 'sleep' again, bending back and exposing even more of himself to the one guard he had targeted.
"I could cover for you," The target suggested. "Who's going to know? Get done, get back. It's not like this piece of trash is going anywhere."
The other man grunted, thought it over, and then agreed. "Okay. You rat on me though, Jim, and I'll be jamming my gun up your ass, got that?"
"Uh, yeah," The target replied nervously.
The door opened and closed. Duo opened his legs even more and leaned back, trying to give himself as much slack in the chain as possible. He wasn't surprised to hear a zipper going down, but he was startled when his target landed on top of him without warning, grabbed handfuls of his loose hair, and began viciously trying to find his entrance with his erection. His tongue lapped at Duo's face.
"Sick shit!" Duo exclaimed. He sank his teeth into the side of his attacker's face and tasted blood and flesh. He bit until his teeth met.
The guard jerked backwards, screaming, but Duo's knees caught him with a clash of chains, locking on the man's head and neck and squeezing tight. Duo twisted his hips violently and there was an audible snap as the guard's neck broke. The guard collapsed, twitching in his death throes, and his face slammed into Duo's gut and hipbone.
Duo gasped, the pain almost taking him under. He panting, blinked rapidly, and then forced himself to work through the pain as he stretched his bare foot out and tried to snag the man's keys with his toes. It was hard. He fumbled again and again. "Would be good to be a monkey right now," he said through gritted teeth.
"A monkey wouldn't be nearly as entertaining," Revenant said as he clapped his hands slowly in applause.
A man pulled the dead guard off of Duo and Duo was able to see Revenant and his thugs near the open door.
"Let me guess," Duo sighed, relaxing back into his chains in defeat. "Monitoring devices?"
"Why yes. Three points for you, Agent Maxwell," Revenant replied. He sounded amused, but there was a dangerous glint in his eyes.
"Heh, took awhile for you to get here," Duo snorted. "Guess you were getting off on watching him rape me."
Revenant frowned. He approached, stared down at Duo coldly, and then ordered, "Five second charge and then take him down to the hanger, hang him upside down naked in front of the crews, and make sure you secure him well this time." He stared down at the dead guard. "Incompetent. Insubordinate," he said angrily. "At least you saved me the trouble of having him killed, Maxwell."
"Happy to oblige," Duo shot back with a grin and then he bit down on his own tongue as the charge snapped through every nerve in his body.
___________________________________________
Heero stood in the darkness of the apartment with a new laptop under his arm. He hadn't had to break in, the landlord had responded quickly to Quatre's name and his Preventer badge. Heero should have been home, resting, getting his other cases taken care of, and planning his assault on Une's records. The last place he should have been at that hour was Duo Maxwell's apartment.
He turned on the light and a very clean apartment greeted his eyes. Hardwood floors, Danish furniture, wool carpets; everything was blonde wood and pale cream. An entertainment system dominated one wall and a gallery of photos and artwork covered almost all of the others. Heero slowly put down his computer on a low table and then began moving along those walls, seeing a pattern to the pictures at once. Duo had been an annoying shutterbug during the war. It seemed that every photo had been framed and arranged meticulously in order of date. After those photos, there were others, Quatre, Trowa, Wu Fei, and some photos of Heero working at Headquarters. All of them were from after the war and, except for Heero, all the others were dressed in casual clothes. He revised that when he saw photos of himself walking along city streets, entering and leaving his own apartment, and getting ready to get into his car. Heero frowned, feeling as if he had failed to protect himself somehow. If Duo had been an enemy... but he wasn't. He was a terrorist and a Preventer agent on a par with Heero himself.
Heero moved to another wall and saw hundreds of framed photos of children of various ages. They were all lovingly labeled with their names and dated. Some had framed artwork beside them of childish subjects. Heero saw the apartment mirrored in many of those photos, but most repeated was a place that looked like some sort of institution. His guess was confirmed when Heero saw a photo of the front of the building and Duo having his picture taken with a group of adults. There was a letter attached to that photo.
"Carmen Sanchez Home for Children," Heero read, "honors Duo Maxwell for his wonderful outreach program for troubled street children."
Heero went back to the photos of the children. He looked for one in particular. He found it, a prominent photo of the young man who had confronted Heero at Preventer headquarters. He looked street tough, Heero thought, angry, and annoyed at having his photo taken. It was a look that Heero was mirroring in several of his photos. There were younger children behind the boy, looking just as tough. The caption underneath read, Maxwell's kids. The name under the boy was Jake.
Heero felt a sudden wave of relief. Duo was taking care of street children, working with an institution. Jake was one of those children. Heero wondered how he could have thought he was anything else. It wasn't logical. There hadn't been anything to support that assumption.
Heero turned to the photo of Duo, studying his shy smile, his hand being shaken by the hand of an older man standing next to him. He looked different. Heero moved closer, trying to understand why. Happy, relaxed, accepting an honor with modesty, looking very young and unsure... that wasn't the Duo Maxwell from the war, the one he had worked with for a year. The man he knew was hard as nails, all business, ready to crack a joke and be friendly, but always on edge, always prepared, and always on the move to solve a case. The man he saw in several other photos, playing baseball with his kids, basketball, soccer, working with them at martial arts, and just being with them in friendly settings, looked... Heero searched for an apt description and came up wanting. He could only think 'proud', but that wasn't exactly it.
Heero reached up and almost touched Duo's face. He lowered his hand, confused. His mind kept running over the year, kept going from day to day, noting how rigid and unchanging it had all been and how he had welcomed that. When he parted with Duo each day, he had gone back to his apartment and carried that routine there as well, he'd never imagined that Duo had done something completely different, had moved from one world into another and had filled his weekends with children.
"Are you supposed to be here?" A very young girl was peeking around the edge of the still open door, looking nervous. "I'll tell my mama on you."
"Do you live here?" Heero wondered.
"Next door," the girl replied.
"I'm... a friend," Heero managed to reply.
"Oh..." The girl looked around the empty apartment. "Mr. M's a nice guy. He coming back soon?"
Heero replied without thinking, "Yes." though he wasn't sure why.
"You bringing him back here?" The girl wondered. "It's getting late. I should be in bed but I heard you talking with the landlord and Kitty was scratching at our door. I thought you probably let her out by mistake and I brought her back."
Heero noticed then that she was wearing a nightgown. "Kitty?" he echoed and then saw the black and white cat looking at him suspiciously from under the coffee table.
"You better go get Mr. M. now," the girl told him as she turned to go. "It's past his bed time too."
Heero stared at the empty doorway and then looked back at Duo's photo. The urge to find Duo almost overwhelmed him. The girls' voice seemed to echo in that empty apartment. 'You better go get Mr. M.' Heero reached up to the photo and he did touch it this time. He whispered, "Duo. I want to, but... I can't."
______________________________
I can't do that again, Duo thought as he curled up, naked and shivering, in
his cell. His muscles wouldn't stop trembling, his head was seething with pain,
his tongue was swollen from being bitten, and the pain between his legs was
constant and searing. He could roll all of that up and shove it into a place
where he could deal with it and continue to rebel, but he couldn't stop his
body from flatly refusing to endure another shock Just the thought of it made
him cringe and pant. Nerves effected the mind in a very powerful way and there
was a point where the mind made reaction automatic: a self preservation trip
switch that couldn't be over come.
Duo rubbed at his raw ankles under the metal ankle bands. After hanging from
the overhead struts of the hanger for an hour, and coming to consciousness halfway
through, he had to thank small blessings that he hadn't had to endure the full
hour. The humiliation of having workers staring at him, walking around him,
or just watching him idly from their work stations, had only been part of it.
The intense agony of having metal bands digging into his feet and ankles had
been worse. He had tried to distract himself by trying to see what they were
working on, but his eyesight quickly blurred from the pressure of his blood
pounding in his head and he couldn't focus enough to make a coherent guess as
to what all the separate parts in the hanger might make when assembled. His
attempts were made even harder by workers walking by and taking sadistic pleasure
in making him swing. After they had finally taken him down, they had marched
him naked, stumbling and shaking from reaction, to a pitch black cell and locked
him in.
Duo still had the loose chains attached to his shackles. They dragged heavily and clinked together as he attempted to feel the limits of his prison. Weakness wouldn't allow much of that, but he was able to go far enough to discover that small sheets of slick paper covered the walls. He was left in solitary silence for some time to ponder that and he knew it was for a purpose. When Revenant's voice sounded all around him, Duo had made a guess that had chilled his blood. Revenant didn't leave him any doubt.
"You are incredible," Revenant told him. "I've never met a man who could take such torture and stay defiant. Your loyalty to your government is to be commended. I will send them a letter, along with the photos that were taken of your latest punishment, describing, in detail, how you endured with honor."
Duo ducked his head, closing his eyes tightly, and just tried to breathe as he imagined all of his comrades seeing him hanging naked.
"I was hoping to convince you to see reason," Revenant continued, "but there is only one threat that a man, who cares so little about his own skin, will hear.. and that is to the people he is trying so desperately to protect." Duo could almost sense the smile. "That's where you draw your strength, isn't it? Not from your own self worth, or your confidence that you will defeat me in the end, but in that you are protecting people by your sacrifice."
The lights went on. Duo was tempted to keep his eyes closed. He sat against a cold wall and leaned his head back against it as he slowly opened his eyes, knowing already what he was going to see. Pictures covered the walls, pictures of his kids, pictures of the institute, and pictures of armed snipers ghosting on the fringes of where those children were playing in oblivious innocence. There were also pictures from his apartment, pictures of the children with bull's eyes drawn over them in red.
Duo wiped at the dried blood on his face that had come from his bitten tongue. He knew he couldn't reply, it was too hard to talk, but he also didn't think that he could have even if his tongue had been all right. His trembling had increased dramatically and he was unconsciously curling into a tight ball at the mere thought of voicing a curse or a refusal. He couldn't endure that shock again. His body wouldn't let him.
"You see that I'm willing to do a great deal to achieve my goal," Revenant continued. "I need you to pilot. I need your skills. I need your mind. I will have them, Duo Maxwell. Now... nod your agreement to become a part of my project. If you refuse to, I will immediately call one of my men and one of your sweet children will lose his or her life. Maybe that little girl over there with the bandana and the curly hair? Or that charming little dark haired boy with the gang clothes? Wasn't he the one who drew a picture of you in crayon and wrote 'my best friend' on it?"
Duo thumped his head back against the wall several times hard and then he stiffly nodded, once.
"Excellent," Revenant breathed. "You see, Agent Maxwell? Having the right weapon gives a person control. Your government was too foolish to recognize that when I offered them my weapons program. They think peace and compliance can be had with legislation and a meager police force. Once I demonstrate just what my machines are capable of, they'll be happy to step aside for more forward thinking people to take charge."
There was a pause and Duo heard Revenant speaking to someone softly. When he returned his attention to Duo, he was firm and still threatening. "I want you to trust my word. As long as you do what you are told, you will be accorded some respect and privileges. Once you have trained other men adequately to take over your duties, you will be allowed to return to your normal life. Defy or betray my trust in you, and I will have your favorite children shot before I torture you very slowly and very painfully. I must point out, that I have been holding my hand up until now because of your worth to me. Make yourself worthless and you can see where that will lead."
The door opened. Duo expected the two men to take him out of there, but, instead, they strung his chains through bolts in the wall and pulled him spread eagled against it.
"Look at him shake. He's scared," one of the men said almost under his breath and then taunted Duo, "You gonna pee like you did in the hanger?"
Duo felt shame burn through him. He had avoided thinking about that, but he did stink and he knew that the man was telling the truth. It didn't matter that he had been unconscious at the time, he still felt completely humiliated.
"Pansy ass," the other man agreed with a disgusted snort.
They left the room and Duo hung, his body shaking from tortured nerves and stress.
"I'll leave you with your dear ones for a little while,"Revenant told him, "So that you are impressed firmly with the reason for your compliance." He paused and then admitted, "It was, perhaps, fortunate that we were able to capture you instead of Heero Yuy. If you would not break for anything less than children, then I doubt that he ever would have. The man, as far as I can ascertain, has absolutely nothing in his life that I can hold hostage. I thought that one thing might have been you... but, apparently, he doesn't even care for his own partner. A strange man. One wonders what motivates him to live another day."
Silence. Duo hung his head and let his eyes close, his loose hair falling
forward around him and giving him at least that bit of privacy. Under that curtain,
though, he smiled, fierce and vicious. Revenant didn't have any idea who he
was dealing with.
_______________________________
"Yuy," Heero grunted into his phone as he sifted through a mound of work on his desk He was going through the motions, his mind working on strings of code as he tried to design a way to get through the best of Preventer security, a security system that Duo had helped set up. After that trip to the computer store for his new laptop, and the side trip to Duo's apartment, Heero had thought of little else besides solving the mystery of Une so that he could then pursue Duo. He certainly didn't want to be distracted by phone calls.
"Listen close, dumbass," a familiar voice snapped back at him and Heero recognized Jake. "We got a man down here by the projects who was snooping around my gang. He ain't a cop and he ain't from here. He had pics of all of us on him, shit from Mr. M's place. Get down here. Shoops and Dunleavy street, behind McKinny's liquer store. We'll make 'piece of crap' here talk in the meantime."
The phone hung up before Heero could say anything.
"Yuy?" Heero blinked and found Commander Une standing before his desk in her Preventer uniform looking at him coolly.
"Commander," Heero's mind switched over quickly and he made his expression blank.
"Something wrong?" She wondered.
"No Commander," Heero replied.
"I have a report that Maxwell's apartment was ransacked last night," she told him, waving a folder in her hand slightly. "The landlord reported that you had been there earlier, using your Preventer badge to gain access. Why?"
"He will also report that I only removed a cat from the premises," Heero told her calmly, "and that the apartment was in perfect order."
"Cat?" Une lifted an eyebrow. "You knew about the cat and went to rescue it?"
"Yes," Heero replied.
"Why didn't Quatre Winner tend to that matter?" Une wondered and her eyes glinted, but with only mild suspicion. "He is the actual owner of the lease and he was very close to Maxwell before his death. He wouldn't have had to use Preventer authority to gain entrance."
There was reprimand in her tone now. Heero replied, "I didn't know that Quatre had access to the premises. Duo acquired the cat only recently. It's possible that Quatre wasn't aware of it."
She looked him up and down and then she seemed mollified. "In the future, Agent Yuy, you will require a signed order for any searches of civilian property, understood?"
"Yes, Commander," Heero replied.
She tapped the file on her thigh, nodded, and then walked away with a click
of heels. Heero counted heartbeats and then bolted for the front door of Headquarters
on the count of ten.
_______________________________
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